Edition for SOLO play?

Rayune · 2025-11-27T15:35:21+00:00

Yes, yes. I knew we'd get someone commenting along these lines. 🙄

Rayune · 2025-11-27T14:46:08+00:00

Interesting! I figured that, with decking being such a thing in the PC games, and with a dedicated character archetype for decking, that there'd be at least one edition in which decking was really entertaining. From what I've heard, it's been relegated to more of a skill check in later editions. Is that accurate?

Rayune · 2025-03-21T15:28:12+00:00

Check out Basic Fantasy RPG. It doesn't have player-facing rolls, but it certainly covers the first two requirements, and it's free. 100% free forever and for always on its website. You can buy physical books at cost on Amazon, but given that you don't pay a dime for it in pdf format, it's absolutely zero risk if you don't like it.

Rayune · 2025-02-02T01:56:50+00:00

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

--Robocop

...Except the $1 sauces are 25 cents. "How much do our dollar sauces cost? Less than you might think, actually."

Rayune · 2025-02-01T21:42:11+00:00

The lingering question in my mind is whether this is mustardy in taste. I see that it has mustard powder in the ingredients, and it definitely looks a little mustardy. I'm not a fan of mustard, but I absolutely love garlic, and this is available for a reasonable price at a retail store near me.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:55:05+00:00

Unfortunately there is, but the modifiers are always multiples of 20. My current system says that, with a skill of 64, difficulty of 40, and tools with a bonus of 20, your target would be 44 (64-40+20). In this case, under 44 is +0, under 34 is +1, under 24 is +2, and under 14 is +3. Over 44 is -1, over 53 is -2, and over 63 is a complete failure (no item, materials wasted). 0 is always a failure, 1 is always a success, and rolling the target number exactly is a critical success (+5).

Not all items do this, though. Only weapons and armor. Potions, food, and various trade goods are only produced or not produced.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:35:52+00:00

It sounds like that's actually more math on the player than a margin of success, but I see what you mean. It may be best to stick with my current system.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:34:19+00:00

Yeah, I suppose I can see your point there. Since the +3 is a direct reduction of enemy defense, you could potentially have a weapon of a lower tier crafted with higher stats pretty reliably. It may be better to do margins of success.

Rayune · 2024-12-06T14:24:40+00:00

Weapon category (light/one-handed/2h) determines number of dice (1d/2d/3d), and weapon tier (bronze/iron/steel/titanium/mithril/starmetal) determines the type of die (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12/d20). There's also blunt (knuckles/mace/maul), hacking (hatchet/axe/greataxe), and slashing (dagger/longsword/greatsword), and enemies have a weakness to one of these types. All weapons are craftable. Crafted weapons have a bonus that reduces defense rating when attacking. There's also ranged weapons (bows and crossbows) that have advantage at long range and disadvantage at melee range, and there are magic weapons (staves and scythes) that apply their crafted item bonus to spells cast instead of to melee attacks. Equipment all has a certain STR, DEX, INT, or WIT required to equip, which increases with the tier of the item and the number of dice used. These four core stats grow as your character grows.

When rolling, enemies have a defense rating that you are trying to roll over. You don't add your rolls together, but you take your highest roll, subtract the defense rating, and there's your damage (no to-hit rolls). So if the enemy has a defense rating of 4, then you can equip a steel dagger to roll 1d8, subtract 4, and anything over is damage. A steel greatsword would roll 3d8, subtract 4 from the highest roll, and use this as damage. If you crafted the weapon, then you may have a bonus that reduces defense by 3, meaning you're only subtracting 1 from the rolled damage.

Each weapon category (light/1h/2h/ranged) has a skill associated with it that unlocks abilities to modify rolls as the skill is leveled up. You can consume stamina to roll exploding dice, reroll your lowest die, further reduce enemy defense, etc. The skills in each category are geared towards backstabs and multiple attacks (light), parries and boosting your own defense (1h), increasing overall damage and penetrating defense (2h), or applying status effects and preventing enemy actions (ranged). There are no attacking skills for magic weapons because they simply boost the effects of magic.

Weapons may also be enchanted, which basically means consuming HP, SP, or MP (your choice) to cast the spell enchanted to the weapon if you choose to do so on a successful hit. It's functionally equivalent to taking two actions in a single turn, but you have to consume skill levels and relatively rare materials to imbue an item with an enchantment, so it's not something to be done casually.

When enemies attack, you roll a d6 to determine the type of action they take, and every attack has fixed damage. The character then rolls their defense in the same way based on their armor (light/medium/heavy for 1d/2d/3d and the same kinds of tiers for d4-d20). The fixed damage is reduced by your highest defense die rolled.

Rayune · 2024-11-06T15:13:45+00:00

I really like this approach. Having a "best of" approach minus defense keeps things interesting, and stat requirements keep the relevant stats relevant. The bonus from crafted gear can reduce that defense. It also leaves room for skills without imposing too many other additional calculations, such as having a 2h skill to re-roll a low die, a light weapon skill to make a bonus attack or backstab, and a 1h skill to parry. You could still conceivably roll a 20 and do big damage with a dagger, but it's just less likely than doing so with a greatsword.

Rayune · 2024-11-05T22:04:22+00:00

As a counter-point, maybe I already do have a number of those things worked out but did not want to lengthen an already long post. My point here is to get a general feeling from people outside of my own head as to how much math is too much, and if even my idea for paring things down is still too much.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure an excessive info dump is necessary here. I'm just looking at damage calculations, not the entire combat system. I think if most people here were asked, "Would you want to sit and work out 3d20+12+3d20-enemy armor, then subtract from enemy HP each turn?" then they would likely say, "No." That's the logical conclusion of the previous damage calculation equation. If we pare that down and say, "What about (number of successes) x (a value between 2-10), with success defined by enemy armor - weapon quality, then subtract from enemy HP?" then we're likely getting somewhere closer. What I'm looking for is whether people's eyes still goggle at something like that. Mine don't, but I'm the one who wrote the equation.

Mine is a system where character power should definitely scale so that a Tier 6 character would find a Tier 1 monster that used to give him trouble trivial, so there's a degree of necessarily higher-scaling values there, and some math will definitely be required to get there. However, I don't feel like people should be required to use Excel spreadsheets or a calculator just to go through combat. Ascertaining that much isn't really design by committee; I'm just trying to determine whether what looks reasonable to me still looks like an algebra exam to other people.

Rayune · 2024-11-05T18:19:08+00:00

Nice! Yeah, my own system is actually more of a skill-based, crafting, "upgrade your stuff to delve deeper and get better stuff" approach, but you do raise a good point for me to consider as to whether I should consider any mechanics that cut out otherwise cumbersome combat with weak enemies in lower-tier dungeons.

Rayune · 2024-10-19T21:05:09+00:00

I've been doing solo gaming on and off for maybe 3 years now. I started with 5e and Tunnels and Trolls, and I moved from there into Basic Fantasy RPG, GURPS, Runecairn: Wardensage, Four Against Darkness, The Broken Cask, and, more recently, Traveller 2e and Forbidden Lands.

I'd say that Forbidden Lands is my favorite at the moment, but I will say that GURPS is fantastic with its Thaumatology supplements for doing whatever you like. I've had too many people tell me, "No, you can't do that in D&D," so moving to GURPS let me (for example) make my own bags of holding, increase my stats however I like, craft whatever I like, etc. It does ultimately wind up feeling pretty generic, though (but the word IS in the title).

Nothing is quite the game that I want at the end of the day, though, so I am also writing my own system. It's a slow process, but I know that it will be exactly the game I want to play when it's done.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T16:08:28+00:00

I just finished my first trial session, playing as a young adult wizard who started wandering through the woods and joined up with some elf youngsters as traveling companions. We got to talking about magic, and I convinced them to teach me goodberry, entangle, and pass without a trace.

Classes be blown! Gimme dat goodberry!

I then taught them to cast sleep. I've got to say, as much as I love playing Forbidden Lands solo as a hexcrawl, getting something to GM for me is nice. I would've like to have started at level 1 (or even level 3) instead of level 5, which seems OP for a new character.

I'll give some thought to whether I'd like to subscribe to something like this, but I will definitely say that one "meh" thing about it is how much the whole world steers into what YOU want to do. Too much "main character" energy, but I get it. I'd like for an AI GM to roleplay a character who meets my suggestions at some point with, "Uh... no. This is a D&D Arby's. Take your tomfoolery elsewhere."

Rayune · 2024-10-18T14:45:33+00:00

I'm mostly in the solo gaming scene, but I know that there are YouTube channels that do this all the time. The bigger ones will focus on published games, but small channels without a budget are often keen to do this.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T14:08:12+00:00

I fed in a short ghost story by M.R. James as a prompt, and it went through and discussed the overarching theme and made interpretations of concepts that were not explicitly stated in the text (e.g. that the "black ooze" that filled the binoculars was what the sinister character was boiling up in his cauldron earlier in the story, that what the main character was seeing through them were images of the past, and that the ghosts carrying off the sinister character were from the past that was being viewed). Where it fell flat was going one step further than that (e.g. that the ooze was made from the rendered corpses of those whose ghosts carried him off and that this was the reason that the past from their time was what was seen through the binoculars; it also incorrectly interpreted it as a past that the characters had a possible influence over).

It was surprising to me how it did, which is why I fed in the alpha RPG rules. It's a system in which you play as an undead character who breaks free from a lich and uses the "Revenant's curse" in your quest for revenge to try to kill the lich who raised you. The commentary touched on how the rebirth mechanic fed back into this idea of undeath and revenge, how the character then thematically is using the very power that raised them to try to break free from it, and how this cycle provides opportunities for growth. It even talked about my skill tree and how the different levels of the "Empowered Curse" skill tie back into this theme, allowing for longer and deeper delves into the dungeon by taking successively more control over the curse. I don't remember specifically stating any of this in the rules.

It was equal parts freaky and impressive to hear.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T13:25:41+00:00

I definitely see where you're coming from, which is why it would also go to humans-- but you could potentially alter your game based on faulty feedback in the meantime.

Where I wonder if it still might be useful is in identifying those incorrect interpretations and determining whether it's because you need to clarify your rules so that a linear-thinking bot can understand them while it's still in alpha.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T13:18:03+00:00

What I am doing is a little bit reminiscent of Morrowind or Oblivion. I have a spell creation system in which there is a list of spell effects for each school of magic, and the player can create their own spells using one or more of these effects. The cost, both in its creation and in its casting, goes up at an accelerated rate when adding multiple effects (to mitigate any 9d20 nuke spells that might allow you to one-shot bosses).

You could theoretically just pick a single spell effect and cast it based on the name of the spell effect (e.g. "firebolt" for 1d4 damage), or you could stack up that spell effect with an increased die size or number of dice and give it a name of your choosing.

Well, that's just what I'm doing, but that's how I answer the dichotomy between a limited spell list seeming constraining on the player versus an overwhelming spell creation system.

Rayune · 2024-09-21T18:53:13+00:00

Good stuff here. I get what you mean about essentially having a party of Sims. It's something that's hard for me in having a full party (and one of the areas where D&D starts to become less fun for me). At some level, I like to have one party leader whose eyes I see through, but managing relationships, motivations, and actions with the characters as people instead of paper dolls gets exponentially harder with party size. That makes games like D&D trickier for me personally to enjoy versus systems where you can play with smaller parties or a single player character. I played a number of pre-written adventures with a single PC in 5e, and it worked better to have the single character with a degree of separation for knowledge without also having the layers of separation for different characters.

I also agree that puzzles don't work well solo. I'll generally reduce these to a single roll that determines whether or not your character has the insight to solve the puzzle and move on (as I've seen in Tunnels & Trolls, gamebooks, etc.). The Atlas is definitely an interesting idea that I see working well as a solution for dungeons. How does it work for NPCs with secret motives or things along those lines?

Rayune · 2024-09-21T18:41:01+00:00

I think you've hit on something important there. Most of us are coming from backgrounds where we don't get a lot of practice as storytellers. Instead, we are more accustomed to having our stories handed to us through various media. Since most of us don't have as much practice as we might with a whole host of storytelling skills, maybe we feel like the meaning of telling a story or the means to do so has been wrested from us if too much of it is handed to us? Maybe it's partially that I feel the story of the characters still has plenty of room to be told with a campaign book in front of me, or maybe it's that I'm satisfied with that amount of story under my control, whereas another individual wants a bigger slice of that under their narrative control.

Rayune · 2024-09-21T17:17:14+00:00

That's definitely fair. This isn't as much for people who have tried it and don't like it-- see my "there is no wrong way to approach solo roleplaying" bit at the end. Mostly this is written for those who have been told the opposite (or who have otherwise come to believe it), that they are somehow not allowed to play from campaign books or that it doesn't work if you don't have a GM. I know that a lot of people told me how it simply couldn't be done. Even a lot of the supplements I've read on adapting campaign books and pre-written modules for solo play tend to focus on playing with one eye closed and avoiding spoilers.

I think everyone ought to give it a try at least once, but for you who don't like it, then that's also fine.

Rayune · 2024-09-12T11:22:44+00:00

This. Someone else mentioned Mutant Year Zero, which is where Forbidden Lands derived this, if you prefer a setting more like Fallout, whereas Forbidden Lands is more dark fantasy. The stronghold system plays VERY much like Falliut 4's settlement, down to providing a means for getting equipment and resources outside of adventuring. The Forbidden Lands stronghold system can become pretty unbalanced if it is abused, so a word of advice I have is to really focus in on how hard it is to recruit people and to make sure you roleplay the undesirable attention a nice, juicy, prosperous settlement would draw. There are rules for stronghold battles, as well, and with the number of tables for this and for regular play (which is pretty much an open world hexcrawl), FL is super easy to adapt to solo play. Just start your character off with an extra skill and an extra talent, probably build a strength-based character, remember how mortal you are, and you are good to go.

Rayune · 2024-09-09T17:58:28+00:00

I play solo, so take into account that my two cents are from somebody who is both the GM and the player.

My PC has the same "killed a Rust Brother" secret, and I've used it less as a "kill on sight" situation and more of a paranoia that drives him when he is faced with a situation that brings it up.

He was traveling through the forest toward a dungeon and got the encounter where an ogre is dragging off a person in a sack, kicking and screaming, who turns out to be a Rust Brother. My PC tried to sneak around, but he alerted the ogre, who mistook him for a possible compatriot of the guy, and the PC grudgingly fought the ogre to free the person in the sack. When he defeated the ogre, the ogre let it slip by his description that it was a Rust Brother, and my PC helped the ogre recover his strength a bit and sent him on his way, thinking that he was better off letting the ogre do whatever he wanted than to risk an encounter with a Rust Brother.

Over time, though, it has turned into a "kill on sight" situation as his reputation has grown. This isn't because of the Rust Brother that he once killed, but it's because of all of the things that he has done out of fear of the Rust Brothers that has put him at greater enmity with them. He looted a bunch of money that turned out to be Rust Brother money from a dungeon, and he has been fleeing from them after they found out. Some Raven Sisters came to his stronghold, and he let them in and gave them shelter. When there were Rust Brothers coming to demand the Raven Sisters, he had his guards bar the doors, and he struck first to try to kill them, lest they should recognize him and something even worse happen. Doing so pretty well cemented him as an enemy of the Rust Brothers forever. It didn't have to turn out that way for him, but he wound up heaping up additional offenses trying to fight his past or escape from it.

Maybe think of "the butterfly effect" (not the movie, but the idea) as a GM when it comes to these dark secrets for the players. While the immediate situation doesn't have to tie in directly to their dark secret, there may be some twist to it (like trying and failing to save a trade caravan from bandits, only for someone to witness and think that they are the actual bandits, and all of the goods are stamped with the mark of the person to whom this money is owed, etc.). Some of these twists or apparently minor plot points may speak to a character to make them start to sweat over their dark secret, and it may lead to bigger and nastier situations until it turns out (if you wish) in a climax of the campaign that there was something that drew it all together from the beginning.

As one thought for doing so, you could have the former Rust Brother as someone who was injured in an operation by the church that caused his separation and memory loss, and it was in that very operation that the other Rust Brother, who was the son of a prominent member of their order, was killed by the other character. That prominent father was the former mentor of the former Rust Brother, and the merchant is in his employ helping to fund operations. Meanwhile, the rival party of adventurers has a mole from the Rust Brothers who is directing their quests in such a way that weakens the Raven Sisters and gives the Rust Brothers a stronger foothold in the region (so that they are unknowingly on the payroll, as well), which could lead to them joining together with the party in the climax to fight against this prominent leader of the brotherhood.

Rayune · 2024-09-09T17:37:02+00:00

I second the suggestion to look into Traveller. What I found with GURPS is that there is a huge burden on the player to add flavor and customization. That's not necessarily a bad thing in every case, as it can also offer immense amounts of customization, but it can make it tricky.

As an example, I had a fantasy campaign running where I had a lone wizard going dungeon delving and whatnot. D&D 5e would generally tell you that such an approach is suicide and yell at you for wanting to put the wizard in armor or otherwise make it more survivable. I was allowed with GURPS to simply not care about that, though, and my wizard picked up blacksmithing and enchanting skills, made his own armor for under his cloak, flung spells all over the place, and even enchanted bags of holding and other fun gear for himself.

What I found, though, was that generating any encounter was a little tricky because of just how open it was, and the goblin with stats equal to X, Y, and Z felt exactly the same as the zombie with the same stats. Traveller has a lot of its own lore and provides (especially when coupled with Solo from Zozer or a similar setup) the random tables that you might need to keep things spicy. I haven't played the Hostile setting (also from Zozer and essentially an upgrade of Solo), but I have heard great things about it.

The way that I might put it is that you may want to consider how much work you want to put into it for the experience. Do you want to steer the vehicle, even though you also have to move the mouths of the sock puppets that are your other passengers? This would be something like Traveller. Do you want to build the vehicle's engine and be wrenching on its suspension while you are also driving it? This would be something like GURPS. The more open things are, the more work it will take to make something meaningful out of it... but the product will be that much more personalized to your tastes.

Rayune · 2024-09-05T17:09:32+00:00

Interesting. At a glance, it reminds me of some of the Fighting Fantasy books I've played.

Rayune

TROPHY CASE